Russian warships have entered Syrian territorial waters in an aggressive move designed to prevent any NATO-led attack on the country under the guise of a “humanitarian intervention”.

“Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country’s civil unrest,” reports Haaretz.

As we saw prior to the attack on Libya, which was also framed as a “humanitarian intervention,” NATO powers are keen to demonize Assad’s government by characterizing attacks by his forces as atrocities while largely ignoring similar attacks by opposition forces, such as this week’s raid on a Syrian air force intelligence complex that killed or wounded 20 security police.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner rejects Russia’s claim that Syria is in a civil war, stating, “We believe it’s very much the Assad regime carrying out a campaign of violence, intimidation, and repression against innocent protesters.”

Of course, we heard similar rhetoric even as NATO-backed Al-Qaeda rebels were commandeerng fighter jets and firing rocket-propelled grenades in Libya, actions also undertaken by “innocent protesters,” we were told at the time.

As we have previously reported, despite overwhelming speculation that Iran will be the next target of a military assault, Syria is the likeliest target for the next salvo of NATO-backed regime change.

Press TV reports that NATO has bombed a university in Tripoli, killing students and staff. “New images have emerged showing the aftermath of an alleged NATO air raid targeting Tripoli’s Nasser University. The attack reportedly left many university staff and students dead,” reports the Iranian state-funded network. “Libyan state television says dozens of others were also injured.”

According to the Christian Science Monitor, “evidence of casualties [in Libya] has been thin, despite more than 160 cruise missile strikes by US and British forces, and at least 175 sorties by those and French and a Canadian jet fighter in the last 24-hour count.”

Evidence is “thin” because the corporate media refuses to believe the Libyan government and does not actively research claims of civilian deaths. Humanitarian wars are usually reported as surgical strikes and when the reality of dead civilians can no longer be denied, they are explained away as collateral damage.

Soon after NATO began bombing the country, officials denied civilians die in its bombing raids. Only the death of Gaddafi loyalists and other Libyans criminalized by the United Nations are reported killed in the air strikes.

Last week the New York Times insisted bombing raids in heavily populated urban areas do not kill civilians. “The Libyan government has a growing record of improbable statements and carefully manipulated news events,” wrote John Burns, following his Pentagon script closely. “Sightings of civilian casualties have been rare.”

The New York Times also reported that aluminum tubes were sighted in Iraq. Due in part to the widely reported lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the United States invaded the country and subsequently killed over a million Iraqis.

A NATO air strike in Tripoli, a city of 2 million people. NATO and the New York Times would have you believe civilians do not die in such raids.

According to Pentagon figures allegedly released by Wikileaks, the invasion of Iraq resulted in the death of 66,081 civilians. The U.S. installed Iraqi Iraqi Health Ministry put the number at 87,215. In 2007, a ORB survey of Iraq War casualties put the number at 1.2 million.

On May 31, Libya accused NATO of killing 718 civilians and wounding 4,067 in 10 weeks of air strikes. “Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded — 433 of them seriously,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, citing health ministry figures which the AFP said cannot be independently verified.

Joshalyn Lawrence filmed Libyans wounded during NATO air strikes. “The Lawrence videos, on the WBAIX channel, of hospitalized civilians is evidence that, rather than injuries and killings by bombs being ‘rare’ or reporting ‘blunders,’ they are realities,” writes Deborah Dupre for Bay View. “In the videos, one after another wounded innocent civilian described atrocities to Cynthia McKinney, in a fact-finding mission with a team including a delegation of former MPs and professors from France, all now in Tripoli.”

“Interestingly, the efforts of the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press and others to portray Libya’s claims on the bombings as ‘absurd’ are patently false and are merely efforts to defend in the court of public opinion the indefensible bombing of civilians going about their lives in a heavily populated area,” the former Georgia Congress woman wrote on June 7.

The blood-thirsty neocons, of course, called McKinney’s fact finding mission an act of terrorism. “McKinney is part of a long Western leftist tradition of progressive sycophants traveling to adversarial lands in an effort to undermine America,” writes FrontPage Mag, the mouthpiece of former Marxist David Horowitz, who received money from the known CIA operativeRichard Mellon Scaife.

The corporate media mostly ignored McKinney’s trip and her reports of civilian deaths and continued to follow the Pentagon script as it has now for decades.

As the EU prepares to invade Libya with ground troops under the contrived pretext of “humanitarian aid,” Texas University Professor Alan J. Kuperman highlights the fact that the entire justification behind the NATO-backed aggression has been proven fraudulent by casualty figures that clearly indicate Gaddafi has not deliberately targeted civilians.

Appearing on Russia Today, Kuperman dismissed the Obama administration’s claim that there would be a “bloodbath” in Libya if there was no foreign intervention, pointing out that there is no evidence Gaddafi is deliberately targeting civilians and engaging in massacres.

Asked about claims of Gaddafi violence against innocents, Professor Kuperman responded, “There is no evidence of that in the cities that Gaddafi has captured either totally or partially,” citing Human Rights Watch figures that clearly illustrate how Gaddafi forces are targeting combatants and not innocent people.

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Kuperman accuses Barack Obama of “grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya,” highlighting the fact that the evidence clearly indicates Gaddafi is “Not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.”

“Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties,” writes Kuperman, adding that the only thing to deepen the humanitarian suffering of innocents was the NATO-led attack, which will indefinitely prolong the civil war.

Of course, to the western media, rebels driving tanks, flying fighter jets and carrying RPG launchers are still classed as “protesters” or “civilians” in the Orwellian doublespeak world of humanitarian hypocrisy.

While the corporate media has played up Gaddafi’s supposed attacks on innocent people, evidence of which is thin on the ground, videos, images and testimony of rebel fighters engaging in massacres and beatings of innocents, including children, has been universally ignored.
While it’s obvious that there have been acts of brutal retaliation carried out by both sides that have killed innocent people, to claim that Gaddafi is overseeing a deliberate policy to attack innocents even as he battles against the might of NATO and the western-backed rebel forces is brazenly deceptive. Even the New York Times had to admit that the rebels were “making vastly inflated claims of his (Gaddafi’s) barbaric behavior,” and had “no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda,” after the much promised “bloodbath” in Benghazi never materialized.

The humanitarian hoax behind the assault on Africa’s richest oil country was invented out of whole cloth to prevent what globalist forces feared most, the defeat of their own Al-Qaeda backed rebel forces.

“The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels,” writes Kuperman. “To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.”

Muammar Qaddafi, Libya's leader, speaks at an equestrian show at the Tor di Quinto cavalry school in Rome, in August, 2010. Photographer: Victor Sokolowicz/Bloomberg

NATO countries sought to bridge differences over their Libya mission as Russia said the alliance’s actions may be exceeding those authorized by the UN Security Council.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers today in Berlin that he’s confident his request for additional ground-attack aircraft will be met, even though the U.S. and France rejected deploying more planes.

“We have got indications that nations will deliver what is needed,” said Rasmussen, without identifying which countries or confirming reports that the request is for about eight warplanes to attack Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.Want an extra $1500 for bills by tomorrow? Apply now!

North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders “are now realizing that this is not a very short mission,” German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said in an interview today. “It takes much longer, it’s much more complicated, it’s much more demanding than some had expected.”

NATO’s Libya operations may become “stuck in the sand,” Hoyer said, adding that it would be “a nightmare” if Qaddafi remains in control of a divided and failed state. Germany is one of the NATO members opposed to the military campaign, although it supports economic and political measures to force Qaddafi out of power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, challenging the extent of the military operations, said that NATO must move “urgently” toward a political solution. In Berlin to participate in talks with NATO foreign ministers, he said that “using excessive military force will lead to additional casualties among civilians.”
Oil rebounded as U.S. consumer sentiment and industrial output increased, signaling higher fuel demand in the world’s biggest crude-consuming country. Crude oil for May delivery increased $1.50, or 1.4 percent, to $109.61 a barrel at 1:33 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.“Send and receive faxes online with Nextiva FAX”“
Regional Developments

Elsewhere in the region, Syrian security forces blocked roads to thwart protesters whose defiance of President Bashar al-Assad persisted for a fifth Friday, following the announcement late yesterday of Cabinet changes, activists said. Routes to the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Harasta were blocked by vans and concrete blocks, as thousands took to the streets, Damascus-based human-rights activist Razan Zaitouneh said on her Facebook page. There were rallies in Homs, Aleppo, Qamishli, the port city of Latakia and Daraa, a flashpoint for dissent last month, she said.

Clashes between protesters and authorities in Jordan left 83 security officers and eight civilians injured, Al Arabiya television reported, citing the country’s head of general security. In Yemen, protesters around the country rejected a Gulf Cooperation Council plan to resolve political turmoil because it doesn’t insist on President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s immediate departure.

In Libya, the limitations of NATO’s air campaign have become evident as forces loyal to Qaddafi stepped up their assault on Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, and pressed their attack on rebels near the oil port city of Brega.
Misrata Bombarded

Al-Jazeera television cited rebels as saying 20 people, including five Egyptians, were killed in Misrata last night by Qaddafi troops and that tanks bombarded the city today near the Kasr Ahmed district. More than 6,500 foreign nationals are stranded at Misrata’s port, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in an e-mailed statement.

Foreign ministers from NATO’s 28 member states and leaders from other allied nations met in Berlin to discuss the Libyan conflict.

On providing more assistance to rebels, including military aid, Clinton said “there have been a number of discussions on how to best provide that assistance.”

“We are also searching for ways to provide funding for the opposition so that that they can take care of some of these needs themselves,” including helping the rebels sell oil, she said. The rebels are seeking to borrow $2 billion secured by Libyan government assets abroad that have been frozen.

Only 14 NATO members — plus Sweden, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are participating in some aspect of the military operation known as “Unified Protector,” most under rules preventing them from attacking Qaddafi’s forces except in self-defense. About five NATO nations, led by France and the U.K, are known to be targeting Qaddafi’s ground forces.

U.S. Role Limited

The call for more warplanes, which Rasmussen said wasn’t directed at a specific alliance member, came 10 days after the U.S. withdrew its ground-attack planes from civilian protection missions. The U.S. continues to fly F-16 missions against Libya’s dwindling air defenses, as well as providing a variety of support aircraft for refueling, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Libya is “Europe’s affair” and it’s understandable that the U.S. isn’t playing a leading role, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said in an interview on LCI Television. “The U.S. has two large obligations with Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“So long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds,” they wrote in a letter published in newspapers, including the Times of London, Le Figaro and the International Herald Tribune.

NATO said in a statement yesterday that allies taking part in the conflict set three conditions for ending air strikes on Qaddafi’s forces: an end to all attacks by Qaddafi loyalists on civilians, withdrawing soldiers to bases, and allowing aid into the country.

NATO said in a statement that its jets yesterday hit eight bunkers, four ammunition storage sites, and two armored personnel carriers near Sirte; three bunkers and a helicopter near Misrata; an SA-3 radar and SA-3 missile launcher near the Tunisian border; and a tank, two ammunition storage sites and a radar near Tripoli. NATO said it flew 60 missions looking for possible ground-attack targets, up from 58 on April 13.

The question as to whyUS-led NATO forces are determined to engineer a regime change in Libya is now becoming clear. Whilst media pundits and political experts still argue over whether the Libyan rebel gangs are actually being backed and directed by US, UK and Israel intelligence agencies, broader long-range Western policy objectives for Libya are being completely ignored.

One only has to read the strategic briefings in U.S. AFRICOM documents to realise the true endgame in Libya: the control of valuable resources and the eviction of China from North Africa.

When the US formed AFRICOM in 2007, some 49 countries signed on to the US military charter for Africa but one country refused: Libya. Such a treacherous act by Libya’s leader Moummar Qaddafi would only sow the seeds for a future conflict down the road in 2011.

NATO: It’s been reduced to a mere private security force for western corporate interests.

According to Dr Paul Craig Roberts, the situation with Qaddafi is much different than the other recent protests in the Arab world. “Why is NATO there?” has become to real question, says Roberts, who fears that risky involvement stemming from American influence could lead to catastrophic breaking point in Libya.

WHY WE ARE IN LIBYA: a revealing interview with Dr Paul Craig Roberts.

CHINESE INTERESTS IN LIBYA

According to Bejing’s Ministry of Commerce, China’s current contracts in Libya number no less than 50 large projects involving a contracts in excess of 18 billion USD. What is even more revealing here is that due to the recent instability in the North African region, China’s investments have taken a serious hit. The recent political turmoil in the region has caused China’s foreign contracted projects to drop with new contracts amounting to $ 3,470,000,000, down 53.2%. Among them, the amount of new contracts in Libya, down by 45.3%, 13.9% less turnover; to Algeria, the amount of the contract fell 97.1%, turnover decreased by 10.7% – all within the first 2 months of this year.

In addition to the numerous Chinese investments in Libya, the North African nation has also recently completed one of the most expensive and advance water works projects in world history- Libya’s Great Man Made River. A 30 year venture, finished only last year, gives Libya the potential for an agricultural and economic boom that would certainly mean trouble for competing agri-markets in neighbouring Israel and Egypt. It could also transform Libya into the emerging “bread basket” of Africa. With global food prices on the rise, and Libya possessing a stable currency and cheap domestic energy supply, it doesn’t take an economic genius to see what role Libya could play in the global market place.

VALUABLE ASSET: Libya’s Great Man Made River.

Central to AFRICOM’s strategic goals is to confront the increasing Chinese influence on the continent. One AFRICOM study suggests that China will eventually dispatch troops to Africa to defend its interests there:

“Now China has achieved a stage of economic development which requires endless supplies of African raw materials and has started to develop the capacity to exercise influence in most corners of the globe. The extrapolation of history predicts that distrust and uncertainty will inevitably lead the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to Africa in staggering numbers…”
So we have a vocalised fear on the part of US military planners, of a military confrontation with China… in Africa. Today it’s Libya, but tomorrow, it will be in Sudan. Does this sound a little familiar? Well, it should…

THE NEW COLD WAR WITH CHINA

What this data does show clearly is that the strategic policy objectives outlined in Washington’s AFRICOM, particularly those ones designed to confront and minimise China’s economic interest in Africa, are working well as a result of instability in the region. In effect, what we are witnessing here is the dawn of a new Cold War between the US-EURO powers and China. This new cold war will feature many of the same elements of the long and protracted US-USSR face-off we saw in the second half of the 20th century. It will take place off shore, in places like Africa, South America, Central Asia and through old flashpoints like Korea and the Middle East.

What makes this new cold war much deeper and more subtle than the previous one, is that it will not be cloaked in a popular ideology like ‘Capitalism vs Communism’. This new war is all about one thing: natural resources. The capture and control of the world’s remaining resources and energy supplies will be the theme which will govern- and literally fuel, all major conflicts in the 21st century. It will be fought through numerous proxies, and on far-flung pitches across the globe but it will never be spoken of by the White House Press Secretary or the Foreign Office in Downing Street.

Early reports out of Libya confirm that “Rebels” are being backed and directed by Western intelligence agencies.

INSURGENTS NOT PROTESTORS

The great PR spin trick in the run up to NATO’s carpet bombing run in Libya was the West’s ability to characterise Libya’s violent armed gangs as mere protestors. The average American, British or French media consumer equated the Libyan uprising with those previously in Tunisia and Egypt. Then reality of course was that they were anything but. However, the bells of freedom and democracy had indeed rung, so all that was really needed at that point was a clever WMD-like diplomatic trick to dazzle the rows of intellectually challenged diplomats at the UN in New York City. The ‘No Fly Zone’ was repackaged and worked well enough for politicians to get their foot in the door to their respective War Rooms.

It seems to have worked so far but the next phase- ground troops and a NATO military occupation of Libya, will be somewhat more complicated to execute without sustaining heavy political fallout. All of these complexed efforts are used to shroud western corporate and military long-term agendas in the region, all part and parcel of the New Resources Cold War with China.

A military and CIA advocate appears on CNN to promote the White House party line on regime change.

HISTORY IS STILL A BITCH

Few will argue that the average western observer and mainstream media consumer suffers from chronic historical amnesia. For Americans in particular, relevant history only extends as far back as the previous season of Dancing With the Stars, or American Idol. Some might argue that this is by design, that on whole the masses have been conditioned to be passive actors in the new media-rich modern democracy because it makes managing the herds much easier.inhabitliving.com – Modern Bedding – FREE shipping on orders over $200.00! Save Now
The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq have yet to return home for the US and Great Britain- both projects are still going concerns for the massive cartel of western corporations. This has allowed ambitious bureaucrats in Washington, London and Paris to try their hand again in Libya. In time however, Americans and Europeans will come to learn what ever citizen and subject already learned many times over throughout history. In theory it may work, but in practice, “Occupation” is a paradox. The US-UK may draw plans in private to occupy an Iraq or a Libya indefinitely but history doesn’t jibe with these imperial ambitions.

It will end one day, and end badly because the Neo-Roman Anglo-American Empire with all its legions abroad, cannot manage its fragile domestic affair back at home. First comes the fall of the Senate, then the rise of the Caesar, and finally the collapse of the Denarius($) at home. The once great empire goes out with a whimper- too fat and too bankrupt to carry on.

As the Great Resource Wars of the 21st century continue to rage on unabated, one question comes to mind: what will mindful citizens in the aggressor countries do to change this present course of history? Judging by ease at which the West managed to pull of their latest heist in Libya, I would say… very little right now.

Statement on Libya – Defining U.S. National Security Interests, Before the Foreign Affairs Committee, US House of Representatives, 31 March 2011The American people have once again been suckered into an unconstitutional, undeclared, illegal, and unwise war. This is not a war in response to an attack on the United States. This is not a war against a regime that has threatened the United States. This is a preventative war. The president never claimed that any large-scale slaughter of civilians was taking place in Libya. Rather, the president has spent close to a billion dollars – so far – bombing a country because its government might at some point harm its civilians.$50 off $500 or more through 5/31/10 use code CJQ4PBAM50, Cannot be used on CTO purchases or combined with other offers
The president consulted NATO, the United Nations, and the Arab League for permission and authorization to use US military force against Libya. He ignored the one body that has the legal authority to grant that permission, the US Congress.While we have not seen credible proof – nor has it been claimed – that the Gaddafi regime has engaged in any large-scale slaughter of Libyan civilians, we see increasing reports of civilians who have been killed in airstrikes by the forces that are supposed to protect them! It seems we may be causing the very problem our intervention was supposed to prevent.After days of the administration’s public speculation about whether or not to arm the Libyan rebels, we hear from the media that the president already instructed the CIA to arm and assist the rebels several weeks ago. So we have gone from the phony pretext of stopping a massacre of civilians to engaging the US military and covert operatives directly to fight on one side of a civil war.Who are the rebels we are fighting for in Libya? We don’t fully know. Press reports suggest that there are some 1,000 jihadists fighting on their behalf. Are we arming al Qaeda in Libya? It certainly appears possible.This is not really a new war. It is in fact a continuation of the neoconservatives’ 22-year war to remake the Middle East. Unfortunately the president has ignored the US constitution and decided instead to continue this misguided policy. This is a deeply flawed foreign policy that will only lead to escalation, blowback, and unintended consequences. Ultimately it is leading us to financial catastrophe. We must abandon the fantasy that we can police the world before it’s too late. Congress must stand up and say “no” to this illegal war.

President Obama says NATO is considering “potential military options” in Libya.
Obama spoke briefly to reporters following his meeting in the White House with Australian Prime MinisterJulia Gillard.
He said NATO, meeting in Brussels, is consulting “around a wide range of potential options, including potential military options, in response to the violence that continues to take place inside of Libya.”
Obama said the U.S. will stand with the Libyan people as they face “unacceptable” violence. He said he has also authorized millions of dollars in humanitarian aid.
The president sent a strong message to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, saying he and his supporters will be held responsible for the violence there.